Yi is a hydrologist with research interests in using satellite-based observations and model simulations to investigate the hydrological cycle, e.g. precipitation, evaporation, soil moisture, vegetation water content and groundwater storage, for enhanced understanding of interactions between different hydrological components.
Recently Yi is working on developing satellite-based global long term (>20 years) vegetation water content and aboveground biomass datasets using a series of satellites. The spatiotemporal variation in biomass carbon over past decades will be investigated to better understand how it responds to climate change and human activities.